The Farming Year

The farm is a hive of activity, twelve months of the year. There is always something to do, come rain or shine. Here we’ve outlined what goes on in a typical year…

January

A fairly quiet month, spent looking after the lambs that were born in November and December. By this time they are all out in the field bar the handful of orphaned lambs or any that are particularly weak. Towards the end of the month we start to get the lambing sheds ready for the ewes […]

February

Lambing starts in mid February and continues for four weeks. 500 ewes are brought into the lambing sheds (150 of which are first timers) and we await the rush of births!

March

Field work begins – fertiliser is spread on all the grass fields to give it a pre-spring boost. By the end of the month we can sew the spring corn. The lambs that were born last November are put through the “race”, which weighs them. A lamb needs to weigh 44kg before it can be […]

April

The lambs can be seen prancing around in the sunshine, and it’s time to roll the grass. The rolling squashes the stones into the ground so that when we cut for silage, the forager doesn’t get damaged. This is the time of year that we buy young bullock calves, at around 14 months old. They […]

May

A busy time of year – the corn has another dose of fertiliser and we start selling the lambs born in February. Silage preparation is underway; the cattle and sheep are forbidden from selected grass fields six weeks before cutting, and the fields are spread with fertiliser. Ground work begins in the maize fields. A […]

June

The long grass is cut and tipped into the silage pit. It is covered over with thick black plastic sheeting so that the heat of the summer can ferment it, turning it into silage. The silage is fed to the bullocks and sheep over the winter and they absolutely love it! Throughout the month lambs […]

July

The start of the month is a good time to clean out the grain store, service the combine harvester and get the dryer out. Harvesting starts around the 10th-12th July, and the first crop is the winter barley. The combine takes the grain off the stalk and spits the stems back out onto the ground. […]

August

The harvest continues. The rest of the wheat, around 100 acres, has now turned a beautiful golden colour. Once harvested it is sold for animal feed. It is made into ewe nuts and other types of feed, which are fed to animals over the winter. We try to get to Polzeath for a surf in-between […]

September

If the weather has been bad, the harvest will creep into the beginning of September. This month is quite busy for field work; ploughing, rolling, cultivating, drilling – and more rolling. On the 19th of September, the rams get a second outing with the ewes, and this time it’s the turn of the younger ewes.The […]

October

The last crops to be sewn are oats and wheat. If there’s any dung left on the pile, it’s spread around the fields. The bullocks are brought in from the fields and housed in farm sheds. There’s two reasons for this; During the winter months we have a lot more rain, which softens the ground. […]

December

Lambing finishes by about the 10th, but it may be a week or two before all the lambs have made it to the fields. There’s just time to scan the younger ewes to see what they are expecting in February, then we can relax for Christmas and New Year!

November

The first week is spent preparing for lambing, setting up the cubicles and the pens and rounding up the sheep to bring them into the lambing sheds. This time of year, there are about 340 pregnant ewes, and they are older and more experienced. Lambing starts around the 12th of the month and continues for […]